A Family Tradition

Recovery from codependency has been about discovering myself; not the pretend self I created in my youth; not the mask I learned to show the world, but the person hidden deep down I have been since childhood; the one I barely knew for most of my life. As a kid I played survival hide and seek with my emotional self to the point that the game became all about hiding. The ability to allow myself to just be a child got lost and I stopped seeking to unfold the ‘me’ I was born to be. Instead I became adept at showing what I thought I had to show; to try to be “good” so my parents would love me. They too lost them self in their young years and in ways of parenting were nothing but children. And the same had to be true of their parents before them and their parents before them… Codependence is a family tradition that often runs deeply backwards into generation after generation and out to the many branches of a family tree. That’s why it can feel almost normal. When a kid is completely surrounded by dysfunction it appears natural and the way one can grow up to be.

Drop the idea of becoming someone,
because you are already a masterpiece.
You cannot be improved.
You have only to come to it,
to know it, to realize it.
Osho